Even as farmers of Halligudi vilage of Gadag district are up in arms against the government's move to acquire land for the Posco steel plant, the Tata group, which plans to set up its Tata Metaliks plant in Haveri, will take 300 farmers to its Jamshedpur steel plant. The group will take farmers of Agadi and Budagatti and other villages of Haveri district in batches in August or September so that...

-The Business Standard   Too many baseless conclusions are being drawn from bad data The Planning Commission, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation, the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO) and the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) are being overseen by some of the brightest minds in the Indian government for many years now. Both together and individually they have made a travesty of the data being brought out, debated and used for...

The Right to Education Act, which lacks a transformational vision, is geared to preparing foot soldiers for the global market. THE most encouraging and delightful news regarding school education in India since the pro-market reforms began in 1991 came from Erode district in Tamil Nadu recently. To be sure, it is neither about the World Bank-sponsored District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) of the 1990s nor about the internationally funded and...

  Can we agree in this country on a floor of human dignity below which we will not allow any human being to fall? No child, woman or man in this land will sleep hungry. No person shall be forced to sleep under the open sky. No parent shall send their child out to work instead of to school. And no one shall die because they cannot afford the cost of...

-The Business Standard   Remember the food riots of 2008? Is the world heading towards another food crisis? That, worryingly, seems to be the conclusion that a new publication on food prices and availability in the next decade (2011-20), issued jointly by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), arrives at. The OECD-FAO report forecasts agricultural commodity prices, in real terms,...